This month New Directions for Women had the honor of being featured in Coast Magazine, as it highlights our very own angel and beloved supporter, Faith Strong. Within the article you will be able to hear her strong candid views on sobriety, while also learning her important role in the recovery community.
In the 1950’s, Strong joined AA to break her dependence on vodka, but shortly after she found herself becoming addicted to pain pills. She knew she was not the only one struggling with addiction. Thus, she started hosting meetings in La Jolla. In addition, Faith led a contingency of volunteers to help the USSR with their addiction problems and personally bring 12-Step efforts to that community.
Faith Strong was a friend and neighbor to Pam Wilder, a founder of New Directions for Women, and supported the organization since the beginning. Faith believed in the mission of offering affordable and accessible rehabilitation to women, and was one of the women that signed the organization’s incorporation papers in the 1970’s.
Ahead of the medical research done by Harvard Medical School, New Directions for Women knew that treating the entire family was the key to recovery success in women. Our very own Becky Flood says it best, “If you take a family member to treatment and then put them back in the same family system, well, every family system tries to go to homeostasis. To do that the person (who sought recovery) needs to become who they were before treatment to get the balance. Unless the whole family is changing in tandem, it’s not likely that the system is going to change. I know that when families heal, there is an opportunity to change the next generation.”
The next generation is here and they are more likely to become addicted to prescription pills. In the article, Natalie Costa, producer of Behind the Orange Curtain, talks about her focus to help families with addiction before it becomes a crisis in the family. She talks about ways these families can help keep their kids from becoming a statistic. The Orange County Coroner’s office reported that heroin overdose deaths increased 114 percent between 2012 and 2015. The best way for families to fight addiction is to stop the denial and stigma surrounding it, to be educated, and be active within their home and community in prevention and supporting those that are struggling.
New Directions for Women tries to cultivate an educated community and provides a safe, caring place to help women and their families heal. The work that we do would not be possible without dedicated women like Faith Strong. Over the years Faith has donated millions of dollars in sustaining support to New Directions for Women and has helped make the place more beautiful with a healing environment of care. Faith’s Monarch Butterfly Garden at the facility not only helps save the endangered species, but it reminds the women of the beautiful transition they are going through themselves.
“Faith Strong is an amazing example of what one person can do very quietly to impact the community.” –Becky Flood
To read the article, please visit webpublished.com.
